recruiting and building a founding team - margo crawford

Building Better Teams in Small Businesses

Will cover: Anticipate - Planning - Execute Alternatives •  strategically differentiated approaches Social Media – •  why it matters •  what it looks like now & in the future •  how to optimize

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) play a significant role in the business landscape in Canada.

Small is the status quo

98.2% of businesses in Canada have less than 100 employees

Small businesses contribute more than 30% to Canada’s GDP

Net growth of small business is 9,000 per year on average

Source: BDC Small Business Week 2013

Strategic Responsibilities (WHAT)

The challenge for small companies

Talent Strategy | Financial Performance | Business Strategy

Operational Responsibilities (HOW)

=

Leaders Must Think of Everything with Limited Resourcing Options

Human Resources | Finance & Administration | Governance

What is the problem? SMEs need a way to service their core business functions - quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

Full-Time Hires >> Not always a solution Too Expensive, Not Enough Work, Limited Scope

Time >> market window, early wins, individuals doing many jobs

Money >> resources are very limited

Anticipating, Focus, Plan, Execute

Corporate Operations

Total Addressable

Market Early Stage Focus:

NEW CUSTOMERS

Sales, Product Marketing Focus •  New products •  New features

•  New customers

Product Strategy

Design & Development

Manufacturing & Test

Delivery & Support

Business phases and organizational growth


Total Addressable Market Early Stage Focus:

NEW CUSTOMERS

Sales, Product Marketing Focus •  New products •  New features

•  New customers

Product Strategy



Delivery & Support

Total Addressable Market


Sales, Product Marketing

Product Strategy


Delivery & Support


Existing Customers & Maturing Products

New Customers & Products

Future Customers & Products

Matured Organizational State

Total Addressable Market



Product Strategy


Delivery & Support





Matured Organizational State

TEAM DNA – FOUNDER FOCUSED



Product Strategy


Delivery & Support


Planning for success

2 4 1 5 3

Five key organization functions 1.  Continue focus on winning new customers 2.  Support existing customers/products 3.  Pay attention to future markets/products

4.  High quality support to mature customer/product

5.  High quality realization of new customers/products




Sales

Product Design

NEW PRODUCT

NOW LATER

Gravitates to the newest, the best, now.

Gravitates to released design, when it is ready.

MATURE EXISTING PRODUCT

Team DNA

Product Design

Sales

Finance, Operations,

Delivery, Support

Gravitates to predictability and precision

Team DNA NEW PRODUCT

NOW LATER


Product Design

Sales Product Strategy

Balances all competing business DNA forces

•  Technology intelligence •  Customer intelligence •  Business intelligence

NEW PRODUCT

NOW LATER



Delivery, Support

Team DNA

Product Design

Sales Product Strategy

•  Product features •  Product Mix •  Addressable markets •  pricing strategies •  Positioning •  Product road map

NEW PRODUCT

NOW LATER



Delivery, Support

Team DNA

Organizational Effectiveness

•  People •  Processes •  Technology •  Vision on organization

Bus Dev & Sales

•  Identifying opportunities •  Deliver opportunities •  Influence market decision

makers

Financial Stewardship

•  Financial realities & financial risks

•  Report on financial health •  Identifying opportunities to

support growth

Product/Services Delivery

•  Define operational

vision •  Deliver (people;

technology; processes)

Industry/Subject Expert

•  Deep SME •  Respected and

knowledgeable •  Communicates with industry

& translate internally

Executive Leader (CEO)

•  Outward facing •  Governance •  Sets highest level

direction and tone form the top

Roadmap - Key Functions For Organization Success

WHAT TO CREATE AND OFFER

HOW TO DELIVER

Organizational Effectiveness

•  People •  Processes •  Technology •  Vision on organization

Bus Dev & Sales

•  Identifying opportunities •  Deliver opportunities •  Influence market decision

makers

Financial Stewardship

•  Financial realities & financial risks

•  Report on financial health •  Identifying opportunities to

support growth

Product/Services Delivery

•  Define operational

vision •  Deliver (people;

technology; processes)

Industry/Subject Expert

•  Deep SME •  Respected and

knowledgeable •  Communicates with industry

& translate internally

Executive Leader (CEO)

•  Outward facing •  Governance •  Sets highest level

direction and tone form the top

WHAT TO CREATE AND OFFER

HOW TO DELIVER

Product/Service Strategy

• Opportunities • Capabilities • Strategic Direction


market

Run the business

Define ‘What’

product Design Build

& Test Reach & Sell FOCUS

Deliver &

Support

WHAT CEO

CFO

Prod. Mgmt.

Prod.

Market.

Bus. Dev.

CTO

Head of R&D

Head of R&D

Design Leaders

Head of Ops.

Head of Manufact.

Marketing & Comms

Sales

Bus. Dev.

Prod. Market.

Head of Customer Support

Sales Eng.

HOW

Controller Accountant Office Mgr. HR Purchasing IT

Market Research Market collateral

- Tech. planners Research

-Engineer -Scientists - QA - PM

- Project manage - Manufact. - Supply chain - Tech. - Research assistant - assemble

-Marcomm -Support - Sales Engineer -Media Relations

-Sales Support

- Supply Chain - Logistics - Install & Test - support - training - Customer Support


Formation

Technical Milestones

Proo

f of

Con

cept

V.1

Prod

uct

V.1

GA

Prod

uct

V.2

Prod

uct

V.2

GA

Prod

uct

Financial Milestones

Seed

Fu

ndin

g

Serie

s A Se

ries

B Stra

tegi

c Re

venu

e

+ M

argi

n Re

venu

e

Year

ly

Reve

nue

Gro

wth

Qua

rterly

Re

venu

e G

row

th

Serie

s C IPO

/M&A

Customer Milestones

Com

pan

y La

unch

Early

C

usto

me

r BD

Cus

tom

er

Tria

ls

Stra

tegi

c C

usto

mer

Sa

les

Repe

at

Sale

s

Repe

at

Sale

s

Repe

at

Sale

s

New

Ac

coun

ts New

Ac

coun

ts New

Ac

coun

ts

V.1

Sust

aini

ng

V.2

Sust

aini

ng

Organizational Milestones

CEO

R&D Lead

CFO (P/T?)

PLM

Sr. R&D

Marcomms

Int./Jr. R&D

BD/Sales

QA

SE’s

Sales (Hunter)

Sales (Farmer)

CTO

Sales Support

Customer Support

HR (P/T?)

VP Sales

VP Marketing

Admin. Support CFO

(F/T) Accountant COO?

HR (F/T?)

Company Stage – business inflection points

Pre-revenue Early revenue Repeatable revenue

Maturing Products

Major Revenue Growth

Planning

Workforce Planning Challenges

Time

Corporate Leade

rship and Opera

<ons Build, deliver

& support

Design & development

Marke<ng & Sales

Headcoun

t

Product defini<on roles

Revenue and cash flow will likely not cooperate with your workforce plans Plan

Actual

Finding People

Time

Core

Hea

dcou

nt

Build, deliver & support

Corporate Leadership and Operations

Design & development

Marketing & Sales Product definition roles

Flex

Reso

urcin

g ALTERNATIVES - Workforce Planning

ALTERNATIVES – Virtualized Talent

Why This Model Works

Sustainable approach to resourcing key business

functions

Compelling team atmosphere for

individuals joining BSG

Business model can scale and thrive

•  Flexible, Scalable •  Affordable •  Full Coverage •  Business-Centric

•  Experienced Practice Leaders Oversee Team, Clients

•  Low Fixed-Costs •  Scalable Resourcing

•  Creates Individual Opportunities

•  Rich Collaboration •  Connectedness •  Efficiencies and

Economies of Scale

For COMPANIES As a BUSINESS For INDIVIDUALS

Features Features Features

Human Resources

Strategic & Operational •  Executive HR Leadership •  Organization Design •  Training & Development •  Talent Management •  Strategic HR Planning •  Recruitment •  Policy Development &

Compliance •  Compensation & Benefits

Finance & Administration

Virtual CFO Bookkeeper Member of management team. Senior financial oversight

Operational accounting support (accurate, timely day-to-day transactional)

•  Cost-Effective •  Sustainable •  Long-Term •  Scalable •  Flexible

(As Needed)

•  Financial Oversight •  Forecasting/Budgeting/Cash Flow •  Leading Business Indicators •  Financing Strategies

+ =

Strategy & Governance

•  Corporate Governance Best Practices

•  Board Effectiveness •  Advisory Board •  Executive Team

Effectiveness •  Business Mentoring •  Succession Planning •  Strategic Planning •  Business Strategy

New Alternative Sources of Talent

Contests

Complementors

Collaborative Communities

Labour Markets

Harvard Business Review “Using the Crowd as an Innovation Partner” By: Kevin Boudreau & Karim Lakhani, April 2013

Framework for crowd work processes WORK

task decomposition

WORKERS

job design

platform

hierarchy reputation

motivation

task assignment

OUTPUT

wor

kflow

Proposed framework for future crowd work processes to support complex and interdependent work. A. Kittur1, J. Nickerson2, M. Bernstein3, E. Gerber4, A. Shaw4, J. Zimmerman1, M. Lease5, J. Horton6 1Carnegie Mellon University, 2Stevenson Institute of Technology, 3Stansford University, 4Northwestern University, 5University of Texas Austin, 6oDesk

collaboration real-time work

quality assurance

crowds AI

Social Media Harvard Business Review, March 2015 “Is Social Media Actually Helping Your Company’s Bottom Line?” By: Frank Cespedes

•  building brand as an employer of choice •  reaching communities for a longer

conversation

Questionable practices

•  buying likes •  viewed ads appear for < 1 second

What is it about?

•  not about selling •  about building awareness

Value for companies

The Job Advertising Eco-system •  Job Boards •  Job Aggregators

More job boards than you can shake a s<ck at

Research: •  Spend time on the Internet as a job-seeker. Which

sites have the best SEO? •  Ask colleagues, employees and others in your

industry. •  Don’t ask Google, “What are the best job boards?”

- The answers will be sponsored content. •  Don’t be seduced by niche job boards. Ready-

made software packages enable just about anybody to create a job board.

•  And most importantly…

How do you cut out the NOISE?

•  Measure the results of your job posting activities and leverage those metrics to make better decisions in the future.

•  Don’t simply remember where your last hire came from…

…Build Recrui<ng Intelligence

Cost Applicants Strong Candidates

Hired

Job Board 1 $250 50 8 0

Job Board 2 $300 75 1 1

Which job board is beRer? Cost Hired

Job Board 1 $250 0

Job Board 2 $300 1

Are you sure?...

•  Also known as web crawlers and job search engines

•  These are search engines that crawl the web and aggregate jobs in one place, one list, based on your search terms.

•  Job aggregators such as Indeed, SimplyHired, and Eluta can find jobs on your website if each job has its own URL and a clearly identified job location - Eg:

Application Software Developer - Oakville

Job Aggregators

Job Aggregators can increase the visibility of the jobs on your Careers page

Aggregator Ac>vate!

•  We continue to have success posting professional jobs on LinkedIn. But part of that success comes from knowing how to leverage LinkedIn. Stay tuned…

•  We also use Indeed, which is an aggregator and a job board with excellent SEO. •  Posting a job is simple and free. •  Indeed might already be finding the jobs on your

Careers page. If not, get in touch with an Indeed rep to find out how Indeed can “index” these jobs.

Where do we post?

Networks: Your Best Recruiting Tool

•  If finding a job is all about networking, the obvious corollary is that filling a job is all about networking too.

•  Your networks – personal and professional – represent rich pools of potential hires. All the more so if you’re an executive or a player in the industry.

•  Social media are the tools through which you can tap into your networks.

“It’s all about who you know.”

•  Share your LinkedIn jobs to your network and to groups that you belong to.

•  Encourage employees, including and especially the leadership team, to share the job on their LinkedIn accounts.

•  Encourage your leadership team to tweet the job.

•  Career opportunities have a ton of credibility when they come from executives.

Disseminate your jobs through social media

•  Encourage employees, including and especially the leadership team, to share the job on their LinkedIn accounts.

•  Simply go to your LinkedIn homepage and paste the job’s URL here:

Share a job through LinkedIn

•  Tweet the URL along with an image and a short message.

•  Programs like Hootsuite or BufferApp usually automatically shorten URLs for tweets. Bitly.com can also shorten and improve the look of a URL.

Share a job through TwiRer

•  Research appropriate job boards for your sector/target market

•  Use networks and social media to push out jobs for a broader reach

•  Use correct techniques when posting jobs to careers page to attract aggregators

•  Keep track of key metrics •  How many applicants come in and where the

strongest applicants come from

Developing a Strategy

recruiting and building a founding team - margo crawford

Business

winning new customers

new customerssales

bdc small business week

business landscape

small businesseswill

core business functions

limited anticipating

high quality support